EDITORIAL: HRM’s rural divide on fire protection

A study by University of King’s College journalism students published in The Chronicle Herald on Friday raises questions about the capacity of firefighting services in rural parts of Halifax Regional Municipality. (Contributed)

The growing disparity in the adequacy and availability of firefighting services across Halifax Regional Municipality — and the reasons for that situation — present an urgent challenge for the sprawling municipality.

In HRM, the urban core is served by fire stations manned 24 hours a day, seven days a week by paid firefighters. Most suburban areas are served by composite fire stations with paid firefighters on duty on weekdays, volunteers staffing off-hours and weekends. The rest, mainly rural areas, rely on all-volunteer fire stations.

But since amalgamation, the number of volunteer firefighters in HRM has halved, dropping from 1,200 to barely 600 today. That’s partly due to depopulation of rural areas of the municipality, partly due to the increased commitment — such as mandated level of training — that was required of volunteer firefighters after amalgamation.

Fewer volunteer firefighters means fewer local people to respond to fire emergencies in rural parts of HRM. Firefighters stationed further from an emergency are sometimes the first to arrive in rural areas.

The students’ findings raise many questions. There’s no doubt volunteerism and community engagement are positives for any community. Can the drop in the number of volunteers be stemmed? Would offering annual honorariums, say of $5,000 to $10,000, help induce more people to volunteer? (That would certainly be cheaper than full-time paid professionals.) Those are questions city council and staff need to seriously ponder.

Perhaps another level of mixed staffing in fire stations is needed in rural areas, with a small core of full-time, paid firefighters, their numbers supplemented by volunteers.

Whatever the solution, municipal officials must confront the lack of adequate fire protection in rural areas of HRM today.

King’s students found that insurance companies deem a rural structure as essentially unprotected if the nearest firehall is further than eight kilometres away or has fewer than 15 volunteer firefighters. That means that structure’s owner would pay the highest fire insurance rate.

So perhaps the municipality should ask rural residents if they would pay a bit more for fire protection if that saved them a greater amount in annual fire insurance premiums.

Beyond that is the far more important question of protecting lives. Higher insurance premiums don’t fund life-saving fire services. If resources can be shifted from insurance to fire protection, rural areas would be better off.